PSVita

Mighty No. 9 is a game that had more potential than it had any right to. But, all of that potential was left squandered in an experience that felt hollow at its best and annoying the rest of the time.

Keiji Inafune just about set the world on fire with his Kickstarter campaign a few years back. His promise was simple: recreate the magic of the original Mega Man series on modern consoles. He promised a character and premise that was “legally distinct” from Mega Man, but close enough that anyone paying attention would know exactly what he was doing.

Mighty No. 9 is a game where players take control of a robot named Beck as he fights several different robots, called Mighty Numbers, and takes their powers for his own when he defeats them. If that sounds familiar to you, then you can congratulate yourself for recognizing the basic structure of the Mega Man series.

The fact that Mighty No. 9 all but steals Mega Man’s thunder isn’t really a negative at all. Capcom had been squandering the property for years and it was far past time for a return for the franchise. The thing that brought this game down for me was that it felt like it was being slapped together haphazardly and with no regard for making anything other than an homage to an old game.

Is it a Family Game?

Mighty No. 9 features futuristic combat between cartoon robots. There is nothing to be concerned about here if you let your kids watch pretty much ANY kind of cartoon.

Playability Assessment

Mighty No. 9 is not as difficult as Mega Man games, but it is still going to be very challenging for younger players who are not very experienced with platforming games.

Conclusion

I desperately wanted to like Mighty No. 9 even if only to serve as an introduction to this style of games for my kids. At the end of the day, though, parents would definitely be better served spending the money on a copy of the Mega Man Legacy Collection to serve that purpose. It will be more challenging, but the reward will be far sweeter.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on Pixelkin.org. Make sure to check them out when you get the chance.

The Square Enix team took some time on their E3 2016 Twitch stream to give a lengthy demo of the North American localized version of Dragon Quest Builders. The game was announced as coming to the West a month ago, and it was quickly dismissed by a large segment of the public as a Minecraft clone.

I’ll admit that I shared their opinions until I spent time watching the demo. Dragon Quest Builders differs from Minecraft is several significant ways.

First, the perspective is different. Minecraft is a first-person game while Dragon Quest Builders is told from an isometric third-person perspective. This might seem like a superficial difference, but I don’t think that it is. Minecraft creations, especially in the games creative mode, are personal expressions like drawings and sculptures. The first person perspective helps enhance those feelings. The isometric perspective used in Builders lacks that personal connection. I don’t know that this weakens the game at all, but it is, at the very least, a difference that is worth pointing out.

Second, Dragon Quest Builders has a more game-like structure. It has a plot, specific stages, and clear objectives. In this way, it is essentially just another role-playing game with a different conflict resolution system. Minecraft, as is well known, is very free form. There are clear mechanics, and there is even and “end,” but that is not clearly enforced through gameplay.

Dragon Quest Builders has a very unique gameplay loop. Players are tasked with defeating the forces of evil by… building things for people. That’s right. Killing monsters doesn’t even give experience. Instead, the wandering monsters that populate the world drop materials that are needed to help build objects. For example, the slimes drop blue goo which can be combined with wood to make torches.

Its not all freeform though. The people in your slowly growing town will give you quests and ask for specific things to be built. A blacksmith might request a smithy, for example. This gives you specific goals to accomplish whenever you are playing.

Square Enix is releasing Dragon Quest Builders for the PS4 on October 11, 2016 in North America and just three days later in Europe.

There really isn’t any way around it. video games are an expensive hobby to get into. The consoles are all hundreds of dollars each and the games themselves can cost $60 or more! It is no wonder, thanks to prices like that, that parents are nervous to bring consoles into the house. Saving up the money for the console itself isn’t enough because games are coming out constantly.

Fortunately, families who own an Xbox One or a PlayStation 4 have a few services available to them that can bring in a steady stream of games into the house that doesn’t require dropping a paycheck every month.

Xbox Live Gold

Xbox Live was originally designed as the Microsoft multiplayer service. It still serves that purpose today, but it has been expanded to include a suite of free to download games each month. Xbox Live Gold members are given access one game each for the Xbox One and the Xbox 360 from the 1st to the 15th of each month, and then a second pair of games for the second half of the month. That adds up pretty quickly. Even better? The Xbox 360 games carry value for Xbox One owners because of the impending backwards compatibility update.

It is true that some of the Games with Gold are not family friendly, but it is infrequent that a month will pass by without at least one of the games being fine for families to play.

Xbox Live Gold members also get special discounts on games each week that can add up over time!

The service can be purchased monthly, but it is at its least expensive when it is purchased annually for $59.99 (or ~$45 on Amazon here.).

PlayStation Plus

Xbox Live came first, but PlayStation was the first company to start incentivizing people to purchase the service by giving away free games. They give out multiple games each month for PS4, PS3 and the Vita. Many of these games are available on all three systems are “cross buy” so it is not infrequent that you will be able to get a whole bunch of games

The service is required to enable multiplayer on the PlayStation 4, but this is largely an afterthought once you consider the value added by the instant game collection. Members also get special discounts on games each week that can add up over time!

The service can be purchased monthly, but it is at its least expensive when purchased annually for $49.99.

EA Access

EA Access works differently, but it is still worth mentioning because it is a subscription gaming service that carries a significant amount of added value for some families. It is a program that is exclusive to the Xbox One that grants the following benefits.

A 10% discount on the digital purchase of EA titles.

The chance to play up to 10 hours of each EA title before it is released.

Access to every game in the EA Vault. This is a list of games that is growing regularly. It includes all of the sports titles from the previous years as well as games like Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare and Peggle 2. This is a value that will only grow with time as more and more games are released.

The service can be purchased monthly, but it is at its least expensive when it is purchased annually for $29.99.

As you can see, these services may seem intrusive, but they pack a huge amount of value.

Sony will be closing out the day on Monday with their E3 press event just like they have for the last several years. They have a sales lead so far for the current console generation, but I wouldn’t call it a *comfortable* one. They need their press event to be amazing in order to maintain their lead over the Microsoft Xbox One (especially now that their base model is $350).

Here are some of my thoughts and predictions:

Uncharted IV: A Thief’s End will take center stage.

The uncharted series is rated M, so it doesn’t merit much discussion here, but this is likely going to be the biggest release for the PlayStation 4 by the time it is released next year no matter what comes out between now and then. It is a MASSIVE franchise.

Anyone with teenagers will want to at least keep your eye on it as it will likely be something they want if they have a PlayStation 4.

The PSVita will be a non-presence.

The long and short of it is that The PSVita is thriving through the support of independent game developers and will continue to do so for a long time. Sony doesn’t have to spend a single marketing dollar on the PSVita in order to make that happen.

Virtual Reality will be part of their show.

Project Morpheus is Sony’s VR headset. It is currently slated for a 2016 release but we don’t have any real details aside from that. I expect that we will see the final product and some actual games to go along with it. If we are lucky we will see a price point and a smaller release window, but that is a real stretch.

Sony will, finally, unveil some of the projects that their first party studios are working on.

Sony owns a whole bunch of studios that are responsible for almost all of their PlayStation exclusives. Many of them are working on projects, and have been for years, but they have been silent on what exactly those projects are.

They are running headlong into a Holiday season where Microsoft will be releasing several HUGE games like HALO 5: Guardians, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Forza Motorsports 6. The next big Sony release will not happen until months later when Uncharted launches. Sony has been hesitant to announce games too early in development, but it would probably be a good idea to share some information with the world to help build excitement.

Maybe. JUST MAYBE. We’ll finally see the Last Guardian.

At this point The Last Guardian is a legend. It was debuted at an E3 several years ago to thunderous applause. This was a follow-up from the team that made Shadows of the Colossus (argued by some as one of the better games in the history of the medium). The trailer showed a young boy travelling alongside a giant dragon/dog/bird-like creature. But we have seen nothing of the game since then aside from reassurance that it is still in development.

Many doubt this to be true, though, because that means it would have been in development for more than a decade. That is unprecedented.

With that said, if the game is coming, then maybe we’ll see it on the biggest stage of them all.

What about you? What are your Sony predictions? Sound off in the comments.

International Star Wars Day is coming up on May the fourth (Do you get it? Yeah.. you got it.) and with it come all kinds of great sales on Star Wars merchandise on online retailers. Video games are no exception. Below is a list of sales that have started on Steam, Good Old Games, PlayStation Network (PSN), and Xbox Live.

The sale prices are listed next to each game title with their sale prices in parenthesis.

Steam has a bundle called the Star Wars Collection which includes every Star Wars game on the service except the four games in the X-Wing bundle listed above. The bundle is on sale for a mere $23.00 (its original price is $99.99). There are fourteen games in the bundle and they include some absolute classics. If you or anyone in your family is a Star Wars fan, then this is a most buy at this price.

These are the games in the bundle. It is worth nothing that they are all on sale individually as well. Their individual prices are listed for reference.

Xbox Live

Star Wars Sales on Xbox Live have all been tied into the Games With Gold promotion. It is honestly a good idea to check in there regularly because there are always good deals. The Star Wars deals, however, are as follows:

Xbox One

Angry Birds Star Wars $9.99 (49.99)

Star Wars Pinball Pack $2.49 (9.99)

Star Wars Pinball: Balance of the Force $4.99 (9.99)

Star Wars Pinball: Heroes Within $9.99 (9.99)

Xbox 360

Star Wars Pinball $2.29 (9.99)

Star Wars Pinball: Balance of the Force $4.99 (9.99)

Star Wars Pinball: Heroes Within $4.99 (9.99)

The following games are listed as on sale for the Xbox 360, but no information was provided about their pre-sale prices.

Comcept will be teaming up with Deep Silver to publish the “Kickstarter sensation” Mighty No. 9 during September of 2015. The game, designed by Keiji Inafune (the man behind Mega Man), will release in the US on September 15th in both a digital and retail version! The Kickstarter had predicted a Spring 2015 launch, so many fans were disappointed today when Comcept made the announcement. But, delays in the video game industry are always good. They always result in a fuller and more polished experience.

In this case the delay, coupled with the partnership with Deep Silver, has allowed Comcept to add even more value. They will be including an extra game level in the retail version of the game that features an epic battle with the character “Ray.” Completion of the level will unlock Ray as playable for the entire game. If he plays very differently than Beck, then this is a great value add for everyone.

Retail versions of Mighty No. 9 will be available for the Microsoft Xbox One, the Sony PlayStation 4, and the Wii U. Digital versions will be available for those systems as well as the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PSVita, and Nintendo 3DS.

Reviewed for PlayStation 3 and PC, available on PSVita and PlayStation 4

Overall Review

I’m sure all of us at one point or another have rooted for lab mice to rise up against their evil scientist overlords, right? If you have.. well… that’s a bit weird, but MouseCraft will not be the game for you. You will find no mice but the mindless variety and not only are they taking part in an experiment, you are too.

MouseCraft mixes the gameplay of Lemmings and Tetris (if you don’t know what Tetris is, I’m afraid we must now part ways). Under the supervision of the evil overlord scientist cat Schrödinger, you are responsible for guiding each of three mice to safety and cheesy goodness using only a variety of Tetris-like blocks and a generous sense of timing.

The mice walk from left to right unless they reach an obstacle. Very quickly this default behavior becomes part of nearly every solution as you let one mouse through but deflecting the others so that you time your runs perfectly. As they walk, they will find bombs and shards (the former used to blow up blocks and the latter used as a currency to move through each of the four primary map areas). Blocks come in a variety of types: standard, jelly, electrical (and deadly), exploding, impervious, and reusable. These blocks are used to navigate the mice through water, over acid, off high falls, and to reach out of the way places to find those elusive shards.

All these environmental variables, coupled with the crazy timing wizardry, resulted in elation when I pulled it all off and saw my three mousy charges gleefully eating up their prize.

However, with 80 levels, the pacing from level to level and the introduction new mechanics was an issue for me. I found myself particularly early in the game simply zoning out as I performed the same acts over and over. This was especially true for levels that no amount of tinkering on my point provided an answer and I was left either abandoning a mouse or shard (or more often consulting Youtube) in order to move on.

Exacerbating these issues were the flat characters. The Pixar-ish visuals promised a depth of story that the game never delivered on. A few short cutscenes were all the story given and I never cared about what I was doing for more than the gameplay.

In addition to the core game, MouseCraft also has a level editor where you can edit, save, and play custom built levels. The interface is intuitive and it was cool seeing what I could come up with. Levels are saved locally and we did not see any way to share levels online. This might be fixed later on, but is, sadly, not functional at this point

Family Gaming Assessment

There are some animations of the mice dying and floating to the heavens as ghost, and an option during the levels to “Kill Mice” that lets you move forward if one of your mice has gotten stuck. I would have liked different wording so that I didn’t feel guilty whenever I had to use it.

Playability

This is a difficult game. Young children will have a hard time getting through most of the stages without assistance, although older children might find it challenging but doable (perhaps more than my aging brain could muster).

Conclusion

MouseCraft was at times frustrating and at others a bit slow in progressing, but it was also rewarding when you finally pulled off the solution to a hard level. The gameplay was a unique mashup of old favorites, though the storyline and characters were shallow and uninteresting. If you are looking for a good puzzler, this is a quality choice that will have your brain spinning in a wheel.

It is worth noting that MouseCraft is “Cross-buy and Cross-Save” compatible. This means that if you purchase the game on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 or on PSVita then you will be able to download the game on the other system at no charge. This is an added value that is worth mentioning especially if your family has both a PS3/PS4 and a Vita.

Let us know what you think of MouseCraft in the comments!

*Disclosure: A review copy of the game was provided by the developers.

Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, TT Games and The LEGO Group have announced LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham. It will release during the fall of 2014for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Nintendo WiiU, Nintendo 3DS, and PC.

LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham is the next installment in the LEGO series of games that has sold more than 100 million units worldwide. Simply put: These games are HUGE and there is no sign that they will slow down.

LEGO Batman 3 looks like it will build off the momentum from last year’s Smash hit LEGO Marvel Super Heroes. This time around we will see the massive cast of characters from the DC universe jump into the action! TTgames has confirmed that the adventure will include over 150 member of the DCU cast including members of the Justice League and several LEGO big figures like Killer Croc and Solomon Grundy!

LEGO Marvel Super Heroes is looking more and more like it is going to be one of the highlights in family gaming this holiday season. The demo is releasing on PS3, Xbox 360, and PC this week. The actual game will hit retail shelves next Tuesday.

We all know that kids can get attached to certain heroes and refuse to play games or use action figures when they aren’t involved. Take a peek below for a full list of the characters that are available in the game. (Note: This list is VERY long since the game includes all of the major characters and a lot of fringe characters that casual fans have likely never heard of.)